Jay Z to File Lawsuit Against Former Tidal Owners

If it seems like Jay Z is building Tidal from the ground up, that wasn't the rapper's intention. A new lawsuit is reportedly in the works in which Hov alleges that the former owners of the music streaming service exaggerated the number of then subscribers at the time when Jay Z's investment arm, Project Panther Bidco, had purchased Tidal parent company Aspiro, Business Insider reports.

According to Swedish news service BreakIt, which quotes an article in a Norwegian publication known as Today's Business, the lawsuit is expected to be for as much as $15 million, what would be 100 million Norwegian krone. Hov had originally purchased Tidal and Aspiro in March of 2015 for a reported $56 million. Jay claims that at the time, his team was told that the streaming service has 503,000 worldwide subscribers, a figure his lawsuit alleges was misleading.

Anders Rikter, a communications manager for Schibsted, one of Aspiro's former major shareholders, told BreakIt in a translated message, "We want to point out that it was a publicly traded company that was acquired, [which means] transparency of financial reporting [was required]. Otherwise we have no comments."

Tidal made major waves earlier this week when the company announced that it had reached 3 million worldwide subscribers, a figure no doubt influenced by exclusive rights to Kanye West's The Life of Pablo, which, as Tidal tells it, was streamed 250 million times in 10 days following its release.

Read the full story of Jay's pending lawsuit over at Business Insider. TIDAL sent XXL a statement on the lawsuit which you can read below:

We are excited that one year after TIDAL launched, we have surpassed 3 million subscribers globally. The growth in our subscriber numbers has been even more phenomenal than we’ve previously shared. It became clear after taking control of TIDAL and conducting our own audit that the total number of subscribers was actually well below the 540,000 reported to us by the prior owners. As a result, we have now served legal notice to parties involved in the sale. While we cannot share further comment during active legal proceedings, we’re proud of our success and remain focused on delivering the best experience for artists and fans.